Why I Am Glad We Live On A Hill

in #homesteading7 years ago (edited)

On Tuesday and Wednesday we received around 2 inches of rain. It left the yard soppy and soaked. Today, Friday, we are expected to receive another 3-5 inches of rain. This morning it started raining shortly after 6 am and by 10 am this is what we see…

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Our house is on a hill, but on three sides of the hill, the elevation drops about 25 feet. It’s a gradual drop. At the bottom of the hill is our pond. This is an old cow pond, because this used to be a cow pasture It is usually only about 3 feet deep in its deepest spots. Today, it is well over its boundaries.

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Not only do we have flooding due to a large amount of rain at once, but we also have flooding because our yard is the lowest part of our neighborhood. Our neighbor, across the street, has a pond that is up higher than the street. It overflows, running through a drain under the road and into our yard where it heads… for our pond.

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The middle of this picture, what looks like a log, is a railroad tie… this is not where we left it.

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I stepped about a foot and a half into the water and the water already reaches the top of my boots.

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Our neighbor next door also has a pond. Here the water is over the levee. (where the table and chairs are)

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Being in the country we have lots of moles. Some of the holes have created little waterfalls.

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As you can see from the trees, the pond is very full. Thankfully, there is a low spot on the backside of the levee that allows the water to run off, as long as nothing happens there, the water should recede a couple of hours after the rain stops. It is scheduled to rain until 7 am Saturday.

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The covers I put around our trees to winterize them are doing well. So far they have withstood strong winds and flooding.

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Even the poor worms are trying to get to higher ground. Hundreds of them are covering our porch. Poor things.

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That is amasing! You probably wont have a mole problem for a while.

We can only hope!

Yikes! Stay dry out there! We are getting the frozen, white variety up here :)

I would much rather have the rain. We aren't equipped for snow. An inch of it shuts everything down.

Dude, I see a potential for two excellent fish ponds with entry and exit points wired up as "filters".

A good old builders JCB earth mover, few bricks, mortar and a bit of concrete and you've got yourself something that some millionairs dream of!

WOW.... and mother nature gave you what is needed to make it happen!

What a vision.... a few weeping willows, which grow like crazy and a few other trees to make it look like a scene from a fairy tale story book!

Mate.... it's all there!

Sounds like a plan! Eventually, we do plan to dig it out deeper and add a gazebo and a few docks. The willows are already there. They just aren't the weeping variety. From experience, any willow tree grows like crazy. They are very hard to get rid of! The one issue we have with it would be all the runoff. It causes silt, which over time, will fill in your pond making it shallower. Another issue we will run into is sand. We know it's there. Just a matter of how far down. If we hit it while digging we would have to come up with plan b. Which will cost us more money.

I've seen people dig ponds and do the "swimming pool" type of thing, where one end is like only a few feet deep and the other end is like really deep, as deep as the machinery can make it.

So it in some way acts as a "water well" where no matter what happens there is water there.

Or the good old wind mill and hand water pump, like in the old western movies, so there is a natural flow of fresh water all the time!

Either way, you are using what mother nature has to offer to make yourselves something that some people could only wish for!

We, too, are glad to live on a hill! Even though we are in the middle of "severe drought conditions" (according to the government), we are happy to be higher than everything else around when the rains do eventually come. Do you guys have any swales or anything on your land to prevent erosion and runoff?

Not really, but we haven't had a significant problem with erosion. There are low areas (we just refer to them as ditches) where the water naturally runs. Honestly not sure if these areas are man made or not. Preventing the runoff isn't really possible. If it wasn't for the runoff, the neighborhood would most likely see some sort of residential flooding. This type of rain event is not very common. This is the worst we have seen it in the 6 years we have lived here.

Wow...are you prone to that much rain normally?

@simms50 This is the most we've ever experienced, but this is our rainy season.

wow these drawings looks awesome! I'm not going to ask what was available on Silkroad then. :)

Go on rocking the cryptocomic domain in Steem -- great nick!

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